Never had a short haul upgrade. Not even when the "select seating" pre-assignments have been messed up and all they have are middle seats in the last couple of rows. Honestly, that's about the only time it would make much of a difference to me.

Only ever been upgraded long haul when the flight has been overbooked - although never in advance, I've just been handed a new boarding pass at the gate or (once) moved up after boarding.

Someone on the NW board has a 60% upgrade rate on LHR-AMS "just by asking" at the gate... Wonder what the trick is...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum35/HTML/008406.html

-- Dambus